GO E T H E: The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.
 life drawing I  II III . . . Elmer Plummer

Elmer Man
Elmer Plummer was a brilliant artist. His watercolors are in the National Gallery in Washington, DC. He designed the roustabouts sequence in Dumbo and the mushroom dance sequence in Fantasia among other films during his 30 plus years at Disney Studios. But to certain artists in the industry today, Elmer Plummer was known as their life drawing instructor. 

Elmer taught life drawing to the Character Animation Department of CalArts from 1977 to 1983. He developed a system of learning the proportions of the human anatomy known by students as “The Elmer Man”. At the start of every class, he would stand before a chalkboard and create a boxy figure while lecturing on relative proportions of the body. We drew along. Then he would introduce a live model to draw, applying this box-man system. There was nothing sexy about this system. Advanced students found it dull and repetitive. For novices like me, it was educational and repetitive. 

Effects animator Al Holter kept his notes from Elmer’s class, and shared them with you.

“I had been looking for Old School Figure Drawing – the approach the Abstract Expressionism had driven out of art training in the 40’s and 50’s to come into a class like Elmer’s was a cool drink on a hot day. At last, somebody who could explain how to plan a drawing so that you don’t run out of paper toward the bottom.” 

"Fantasia"  .  film grabs by Elmer Plummer

                                          Dumbo . film grabs by Elmer Plummer

Bill Perkins Says:

May 15th, 2008 at 4:37 pm


Hi Mike. What I can tell you about this sequence is that the storyboard was done by Elmer Plummer (1910 – 1987) with whom I studied Life drawing under during my years at Cal Arts (1977 to 1979). Elmer was a childhood friend of both Lee Blair and Phil Dike and as they did, studied at the Chouinard Art institute in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. In 1932 he was among a group of students who completed a mural in the schools outside patio-studio by visiting Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros - a contemporary of Diego Riviera and during the 1930s, aside from becoming a studio artist at Warner Bro’s he produced many California Style regionalist watercolours, becoming a member of the California Watercolour Society and as well creating watercolours for the Works Progress Administration in addition to exhibiting extensively. During this time he became close friend of Walt Disney’s and began his long association with Walt Disney Studios. In addition to his feature work (Fantasia, Dumbo, Make mine Music and Song of the South) he produced art and developed many of the gag and comic ideas for cartoon shorts featuring Goofy. After World War 11, he continued working on special projects for Walt Disney and taught art at the Chouinard Art Institute as well later, The California Institute of the Arts retiring in the early eighties and passing away in 1987.


Expanding on his feature work at Disney’s and Dumbo in particular, he played an instrumental part in the “Dance of the Chinese Mushrooms” sequence in Fantasia and as mentioned storyboarded the roustabout sequence in “Dumbo”, a copy of which can be found in John Canemakers excellent “Paper Dreams”. During my time at Cal Arts after a student viewing of “Dumbo” our layout instructor, Ken O’Conner mentioned that Elmer’s storyboard for the roustabout sequence was so complete thought was given to foregoing animating it and shooting the board with effects and camera moves only. Obviously the decision was made to animate it but what reached the screen owed a great deal to Elmer’s board and staging, as did “The Dance of the Chinese Mushrooms”. I can’t speak for his political leanings but thought your observation was a keen one. I am supposing that being an artist during the depression, working for the WPA and having exposure to Siqueiros as a student he may have leaned to the left (as many did then) in his thinking but whether or not that influenced the feel of the roustabout sequence would be conjecture on my part. If I feel safe one on comment it would be that certainly the visual styling, I feel, owes a debt to the styling and imagery found in the work of the Mexican Muralists of the time – again Siqueiros and Riviera. It is certainly a very strong sequence – deserving of the praise it’s received however as you mentioned it may also be nothing more then a product of the period.